Review: The Baja No Pinch tire tool

Some jobs suck, changing motorcycle tires is one of them.

If you've never had the pleasure of replacing your own motorcycle tire, imagine trying to stretch an octopus over 50-gallon drum using nothing more than a couple of serving spoons and some Windex. Someone's going to lose an eye, and won't be the octopus.

Zach Bowman

Traditional tire spoons require you to work the tire over the rim bit by bit. The only problem is that there's a delicate tube inside that tire. Get the tube between the rim and the spoon, and you wind up with a leak, which you only discover after you've wrestled the tire onto the rim. Since buying a Suzuki DRZ400S last year, I've discovered that I posses a certain amount of natural and enviable talent for winding up on my ass and pinching tire tubes. When I spotted the Baja No Pinch tire tool, it looked as if technology had come to save me from the latter.

The videos showed great promise, with guys effortlessly massaging tires into place without uttering a single curse. Everyone on screen seemed to have both their eyes.

The tool is simple enough. A shaft slides in place through the wheel hub, and a ratcheting arm and lever sit up top. The arm uses leverage to push the tire in place without ever coming in contact with the wheel or the tub. I was sold, so I ponied up $139.95 for the ultimate tire-tool package, complete with shafts to fit just about every motorcycle created by mankind. The base kit starts at $89.95.

Zach Bowman

The pieces are well made and look like new candy out of the box. The anodized aluminum shafts and upper housing are slick, and the steel arm and lever look stout enough to handle whatever task you throw at them. Of course, this doesn't mean you escape the nightmare that is tire spoons. You still have to wrangle your old tire off, and the Baja No Pinch tool is of exactly zero use on that front.

Zach Bowman

I peeled the remains of my old Pirelli off of the DRZ's 21-inch front wheel and set about installing a new Heidenau. Sure enough, the No Pinch tool worked great, talking the skinny tire over the rim with zero drama. Compared to fighting two tire spoons, the installation was laughably easy.

The back tire? That was a different story. A stiffer sidewall made the exercise a long, sweaty nightmare. The sharp, square jaws on the No Pinch tool chewed up the bead on the tire and scratched the rim. It took everything I had to get the rubber over the metal and in place—my palms are still bruised from cranking on that lever. I'm not ready to fully discredit the tool yet. Like anything, more practice will probably make the process easier.

Zach Bowman

That doesn't mean I'll jump at the chance to swap my own rubber on the next go. The local shop does it cheap, and that'll save me four hours of sweating and swearing in the garage.

Zach Bowman

To its credit, through all the fighting, I never once came close to pinching a tube, but I'm not sure the No Pinch tool is worth the money. It's handy to have around the shop, but there's not much cause to a separate piece of equipment with you on a ride—especially on top of the tire spoons you need to remove the old rubber in the first place. Even small tools take up space, and there's only so much room on a motorcycle.

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